Tweaker's Asylum

Posted by Pete Fleming on July 27, 2000 at 21:53:48:

I recently used 50 ohm sub-miniature silver plated teflon coax between the Photo-diode receiver and the decoder, thereby bypassing the standard ribbon connector. It cleaned up the eye pattern, as seen on the oscilloscope, quite a lot.

I couldn't measure any definite improvement in the waveforms at the output, although I'd be tempted to say the signal to noise was improved (the CD player spews so much RFI it is always picked up by my oscilloscope cables and makes serious measurement difficult).

I am always a bit reluctant to try to summarise differences where they are based on subjective listening, unless the improvement is based on an A/B or VERY marked, given that we’d all like to hear improvements from our tweaks. However I'd say the music seems a lot "cleaner" and more detailed now. At first it seemed even a little too "clinical" however that is merely personal taste.

This tweak was used on a (heavily modified) Aura CD-50, and I know it has been tried by others on different CD players. The ribbon cable is, I believe a pretty standard way of connecting the boards, and I think bypassing it is a very worthwhile and inexpensive mod.